For The Athletes: Post-Olympic Depression

For many Olympians, when the games end, the trials of another kind begin. That’s the conclusion of researchers at the University of Queensland, who found that many athletes return from Olympic competition to bouts of disorientation, depression, and self-doubt. Futurity reports that the researchers, who interviewed former Olympic athletes who had both trained for and competed at the Olympics, found “the significant shift in the daily lives of athletes once they retire from competitive sport … can be hard to deal with.” They are convinced that while some characteristics of Olympic athletes, such as organization and persistence, are useful beyond sport, others, notably submissiveness, perfectionism, and competitiveness, made life in the real world harder than it is for non-athletes. The research team was chosen by the International Olympics Council’s (IOC’s) Olympic Studies Centre Research Grant Program to conduct the study, “Preparing Olympic Athletes for Lives Outside of Elite Sport: Towards Best Practice.”